My great aunt often referred to la garrigue – she loved to use an occasional French word she knew you didn’t understand. I finally looked it up:
Garrigue is a type of low, soft-leaved scrubland ecoregion and plant community in the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. It is found on limestone soils around the Mediterranean Basin, generally near the seacoast, where the climate is ameliorated, but where annual summer drought conditions obtain. (wiki)
Right – a scrub biome where summer drought conditions obtain. No wonder she didn’t define it for us.